Post-Augustan Poetry From Seneca to Juvenal Part 16

Of mere preciosity and phrase-making without any special obscurity examples abound.[500] Pelion sinks below the horizon (ii. 6)--

iamque fretis summas aequatum Pelion ornos.

A fight at close quarters receives the following curious description (ii. 524)--

iam brevis et telo volucri non utilis aer.

A spear flying through the air and missing its mark is a _volnus raptum per auras_ (iii. 196). More startling than these is the picture of a charge of trousered barbarians (vi. 702)--

improba barbaricae procurrunt tegmina plantae.

One more peculiarity remains to be noticed. Here and there in the _Argonautica_ we meet with a strange brevity and compression resulting not from the desire to produce phrases of curious and original texture, but rather from a praiseworthy though misdirected endeavour to be concise. The most remarkable example is found in the first book, where Mopsus, the official prophet of the expedition, falls into a trance and beholds a vision of the future (211):

heu quaenam aspicio! nostris modo concitus ausis aequoreos vocat ecce deos Neptunus et ingens concilium. fremere et legem defendere cuncti hortantur. sic amplexu, sic pectora fratris, Iuno, tene; tuque o puppem ne desere, Pallas: nunc patrui nunc flecte minas. cessere ratemque accepere mari. per quot discrimina rerum expedior! subita cur pulcher harundine crines velat Hylas? unde urna umeris niueosque per artus caeruleae vestes? unde haec tibi volnera, Pollux?

quantus io tumidis taurorum e naribus ignis!

tollunt se galeae sulcisque ex omnibus hastae et iam iamque umeri. quem circ.u.m vellera Martem aspicio? quaenam aligeris secat anguibus auras caede madens? quos ense ferit? miser eripe parvos, Aesonide. cerno et thalamos ardere iugales.

Alas! what do I see! Even now, stirred by our daring, lo!

Neptune calls the G.o.ds to a vast conclave. They murmur, and one and all urge him to defend his rights. Hold as thou holdest now, Juno, hold thy brother in thine embrace: and thou, Pallas, forsake not our ship: now, even now, appease thy brother's threats. They have yielded: they give Argo entrance to the sea. Through what perils am I whirled along!

Why does fair Hylas veil his locks with a sudden crown of reeds? Whence comes the pitcher on his shoulder and the azure raiment on his limbs of snow? Whence, Pollux, come these wounds of thine? Ah! what a flame streams from the widespread nostrils of the bulls. Helmets and spears rise from every furrow, and now see! shoulders too! What warfare for the fleece do I see? Who is it cleaves the air with winged snakes, reeking with slaughter? Whom smites she with the sword? Ah! son of Aeson, hapless man, save thy little ones. I see, too, the bridal chamber all aflame.

These lines form a kind of abridgement or _precis_ of the whole _Argonautica_, or even more, for we can hardly believe that the scheme of it included the murder of Medea's children and her vengeance on the house of Creon[501]. They are also far too obscure to be interesting to any save a highly-trained literary audience, while their extreme compression could only be justified by their having been primarily designed for recitation in a dramatic and realistic manner with suitable pauses between the different visions.[502] A yet worse and less excusable example of this peculiar brevity is the jerky and prosaic enumeration of Medea's achievements in the black art (vi. 442)--

mutat agros fluviumque vias; suus alligat ingens cuncta sopor, recoquit fessos aetate parentes, datque alias sine lege colus.

She changes crops of fields and course of rivers. [At her bidding] deep clinging slumber binds all things; fathers outworn with age she seethes to youth again, and to others she gives new span of life against fate's ordinance.

The attempt to be concise and full[503] at one and the same time fails, and fails inevitably.

But for all these faults Valerius Flaccus offends less than any of the Silver Latin writers of epic. He rants less and he exaggerates less; above all, he has much genuine poetic merit. He has been strangely neglected, both in ancient[504] and modern times, and unduly depreciated in the latter. There has been a tendency to rank him with Silius Italicus, whereas it would be truer criticism to place him close to Statius, and not far below Lucan. He is more uneven than the former, has a far less certain touch, and infinitely less command of his instrument.

He has less mastery of words, but a more kindling and penetrating imagination. His outlines are less clear, but more suggestive. He has less rhetoric; beneath an often obscure diction he reveals a greater simplicity and directness of thought, and he has been infinitely more happy in his theme. Only the greatest of poets could achieve a genuine success with the Theban legend, only the worst of poets could reduce the voyage of the Argonauts to real dullness. On the other hand, in an age of _belles-lettres_ such as the Silver Age, and by the majority of scholars, whose very calling leads them to set a perhaps abnormally high value on technical skill, Statius is almost certain to be preferred to Valerius. About the relative position of Lucan there is no doubt. He is incomparably the superior of Valerius, both in genius and intellect. But Valerius never sins against taste and reason to the same extent, and though he has less fire, possesses a finer ear for music and rhythm, and more poetic feeling as distinct from rhetoric. Vergil was his master; it has been said with a little exaggeration that Valerius stands in the same relation to Vergil as Persius to Horace. This statement conveys but a half-truth. Valerius is as superior to Persius in technique as he is inferior in moral force and intellectual power. He is, however, full of echoes from Vergil,[505] and if his verse has neither the 'ocean roll'

of the greater poets, nor the same tenderness, he yet has something of the true Vergilian glamour. But he has weakened his hexameter by succ.u.mbing to the powerful influence of Ovid. His verse is polished and neat to the verge of weakness. Like Ovid, he shows a preference for the dactyl over the spondee, shrinks from elision, and does not understand how to vary his pauses.[506] Too many lines close with a full-stop or colon, and where the line is broken, the same pause often recurs again and again with wearisome monotony. In this respect Valerius, though never monotonously ponderous like Lucan, compares ill with Statius. As a compensation, his individual lines have a force and beauty that is comparatively rare in the _Thebais_. The poet who could describe a sea-cave thus (iv. 179)--

non quae dona die, non quae trahat aetheris ignem; infelix domus et sonitu tremibunda profundi,

That receiveth never daylight's gifts nor the light of the heavenly fires, the home of gloom all a-tremble with the sound of the deep.

is not to be despised as a master of metre. And whether for picturesqueness of expression or for beauty of sound, lines such as (iii. 596)

rursus Hylan et rursus Hylan per longa reclamat avia; responsant silvae et vaga certat imago,

'Hylas', and again 'Hylas', he calls through the long wilderness; the woods reply, and wandering echo mocks his voice.

or (i. 291)

quis tibi, Phrixe, dolor, rapido c.u.m concitus aestu respiceres miserae clamantia virginis ora extremasque ma.n.u.s sparsosque per aequora crines!

Phrixus, what grief was thine when, swept along by the swirling tide, thou lookedst back on the hapless maiden's face as she cried for thine aid, her sinking hands, her hair streaming o'er the deep.

are not easily surpa.s.sed outside the pages of Vergil. But it is above all on his descriptive power that his claim to consideration rests.[507]

For it is there that he finds play for his most remarkable gifts, his power of suggestion of mystery, and his keen sense of colour. These gifts find their most striking manifestation in his description of the Argonauts' first night upon the waters. They

were the first that ever burst Into that silent sea.

All is strange to them. Each sight and sound has its element of terror:

auxerat hora metus, iam se vertentis Olympi ut faciem raptosque simul montesque locosque ex oculis circ.u.mque graves videre tenebras.

ipsa quies rerum mundique silentia terrent astraque et effusis stellatus crinibus aether.

ac velut ignota captus regione viarum noctivagum qui carpit iter non aure quiescit, non oculis, noctisque metus niger auget utrimque campus et occurrens umbris maioribus arbor, haud aliter trepidare viri (ii. 38).

The dark hour deepened their fears when they saw heaven's vault wheel round, and the peaks and fields of earth s.n.a.t.c.hed from their view, and all about them the horror of darkness. The very stillness of things and the deep silence of the world affright them, the stars and heaven begemmed with streaming locks of gold.

And as one benighted in a strange place 'mid paths unknown pursues his devious journey through the night and finds rest neither for eye nor ear, but all about him the blackness of the plain, and the trees that throng upon him seen greater through the gloom, deepen his terror of the dark--even so the heroes trembled.

There are few more vivid pictures in Latin poetry than that of the benighted wanderer lost on some wide plain studded with clumps of trees that seem to throng upon him in the gloom, seen greater through the darkness. Not less imaginative, though less clear cut and precise, is his picture of the underworld in the third book:

est procul ad Stygiae devexa silentia noctis Cimmerium domus et superis incognita tellus, caeruleo tenebrosa situ, quo flammea numquam Sol iuga sidereos nec mitt.i.t Iuppiter annos.

stant tacitae frondes inmotaque silva comanti horret Averna iugo; specus umbrarumque meatus subter et Oceani praeceps fragor arvaque nigro vasta metu et subitae post longa silentia voces (iii. 398).

Far hence by the deep sunken silence of the Stygian night lies the Cimmerians' home, a land unknown to denizens of upper air, all dark with gloomy squalor. Thither the sun hath never driven his flaming car nor Jupiter sent forth his starry seasons. Silent are the leaves of its groves, and all along its leafy hill bristles unmoved Avernus' wood: thereunder are caverns, and the shades go to and fro; there Ocean plunges roaring to its fall, there are plains with dark fear desolate, and after long silences sudden voices thunder out.

It is a more theatrical underworld than that of Vergil, and the picture is not clearly conceived, but its very vagueness is impressive. The poet gives us, as it were, the scene for the enactment of some dim dream of terror. He is equally at home in describing the happy calm of Elysium.

Though the picture lacks originality, it has no lack of beauty:

hic geminae infernum portae, quarum altera dura semper lege patens populos regesque receptat; ast aliam temptare nefas et tendere contra; rara et sponte patet, siquando pectore ductor volnera nota gerens, galeis praefixa rotisque cui domus aut studium mortales pellere curas, culta fides, longe metus atque ignota cupido; seu venit in vittis castaque in veste sacerdos.

quos omnes lenis plantis et lampada qua.s.sans progenies Atlantis agit. lucet via late igne dei, donec silvas et amoena piorum deveniant camposque, ubi sol totumque per annum durat aprica dies thiasique chorique virorum carminaque et quorum populis iam nulla cupido (i. 833).

Here lie the twin gates of h.e.l.l, whereof the one is ever open by stern fate's decree, and through it march the peoples and princes of the world. But the other may none essay nor beat against its bars. Barely it opens and untouched by hand, if e'er a chieftain comes with glorious wounds upon his breast, whose halls were decked with helm and chariots, or who strove to cast out the woes of mankind, who honoured truth and bade farewell to fear and knew no base ambition. Then, too, it opens when some priest comes wearing sacred wreath and spotless robe. All such the child of Atlas leads along with gentle tread and waving torch.

Far shines the road with the fire of the G.o.d until they come to the groves and plains, the pleasant mansions of the blest, where the sun ceases not, nor the warm daylight all the year long, nor dancing companies of heroes, nor song, nor all the innocent joys that the peoples of the earth desire no more.

Many lines might be quoted that startle us with their unforeseen vividness or some unexpected blaze of colour; when the fleece of gold is taken from the tree where it had long since shone like a beacon through the dark, the tree sinks back into the melancholy night,

tristesque super coiere tenebrae (viii. 120).

At their bridal on the desolate Isle of Peuce under the shadow of approaching peril, Jason and Medea gleam star-like amid the company of heroes (viii. 257):

ipsi inter medios rosea radiante iuventa altius inque sui sternuntur velleris auro.

Themselves in their comrades' midst, bright with the rosy glow of youth, above them all, lie on the fleece of gold that they had made their own.

This characteristic is most evident in the similes over which Valerius, like other poets of the age, would seem to have expended particular labour. He scatters them over his pages with too prodigal a hand, and they suffer at times from over-elaboration and ingenuity.[508] Desire for originality has led him to such startling comparisons as that between a warrior drawn from his horse and a bird snared by the limed twig of the fowler,[509] surely as inappropriate a simile as was ever framed. More distressing still is the maudlin pathos of the simile which likens Medea to a dog on the verge of madness.[510] But such gross aberrations are rare; against them may be set some of the freshest and most beautiful similes in the whole range of Latin poetry. The silence that follows on the wailing of the women of Cyzicus is like the silence of Egypt when the birds that wintered there have flown to more temperate lands. 'And now they had paid due honour to their ashes; with weary feet, wives with their babes wandered away and the waves had rest, the waves long torn by their wakeful lamentation, even as when the birds in mid-spring have returned to the north that is their home, and Memphis and their yearly haunt by sunny Nile are dumb once more'--

qualiter Arctos ad patrias avibus medio iam vere revectis Memphis et aprici statio silet annua Nili (iii. 358).

The beauty of Medea among her Scythian maidens is likened to that of Proserpine leading her comrades over Hymettus' hill or wandering with Pallas and Diana in the Sicilian mountains--

altior ac nulla comitum certante, prius quam palluit et viso pulsus decor omnis Averno (v. 346).

Taller than all her comrades and fairer than them all or ever she turned pale, and at the sight of h.e.l.l all beauty was banished from her face.